On Sat, 31 Jul 2010, Kevin Atkinson wrote:
Since someone objected to my proposed changes to Salt Lake City, I am going
to go ahead and give my proposal for how I think directional prefixes should
be handled. I am going to stay out of the debate on street name
abbreviations and focus on just the directional prefix/postfix parts. I want
to come an agreement on talk-us, and then would like to make it an official
standard (at least in the U.S.).
INTRO)
A full street address included more than just a Number and a Street, it also
includes a directional prefix. Vid the kid, gave an excellent overview at
http://vidthekid.info/misc/osm-abbr.html. For example (from his page) in the
address:
4242 S Champion Ave E
The 'S' is a directional prefix and the 'E' is the suffix and in:
1337 Rainbow Dr SW
The 'SW' is a directional suffix (really a quadrant suffix).
I would like to formally propose two things
1) An exception to the abbreviation rule for directional indicators
with the fully expanded name going into "alt_name"
2) New tags to record the presence of directional indicators in the
address.
#1)
I propose an exception to the abbreviation rule be made for directional
indicators. 'North, 'South', 'East', and 'West' when a directional indicator
(and not part of the street name) shall be abbreviated 'N.', 'S.', 'E.', and
'W.' (with a period, will explain why below), and Northeast, Southeast,
Northwest, Southwest shall be abbreviated as 'NW', 'SW', 'SE', and 'NW'
(without any periods). The fully expanded name may be included in
"alt_name".
Please note that when a street name included a number and a direction for
example "700 South" I consider the direction part of the name and not a
suffix, hence (for now) it should be abbreviated.
^^^ make that "should _not_ be abbreviated" sorry.
Reasons:
1) When a directional indicator is included as part of the street sign it is
almost universally in smaller letters and hence of less importance.
Abbreviating emphases this fact.
2) Unlike street name indications, the abbreviations for directions are
fairly standard (with the exception of South sometimes being 'So' to avoid
confusion with Street, but that is not used very much, and 'S' is never an
accepted abbreviation for Street).
3) Spelling out the prefix can lead to ambiguous situations where it is
unclear if the prefix is part of the street name (vid the kid gave several
examples in his web page)
4) Single letter shall end with a period to avoid confusion with single
letter street names (E Street) or route designators (County Route E, but I
have no idea where that is used).
5) The fully expanded name may be included using the "alt_name" tag to aid
those searching for an address.
#2)
I propose two new tags:
name_prefix
name_suffix
If the directional prefix is not part of the name than the appropriate tag
shall be used to indicate the need for a directional prefix in an address.
North, South, etc, shall be abbreviated as one of
'N' 'S' 'E' 'W', 'NW' 'SW', 'NE', 'SE'
There is no need for a period here.
If it is included in the word "included" shall be used instead. This means
the the first word (for a prefix) or the last word (for a suffix) is a
directional indicator and shall be left in abbreviated form by name
correction bots and the like.
Some Examples)
To encode "South 700 East" in Salt Lake City:
name = "S. 700 East"
name_prefix = "included"
alt_name = "South 700 East"
OR if the prefix is not included:
name = "700 East"
name_prefix = "S"
alt_name = "South 700 East"
To encode "South West Temple" in Salt Lake City:
name = "S. West Temple"
name_prefix = "included"
alt_name = "South West Temple"
(as an aside, it should never be written "SW Temple", as google maps has it)
"K Street NW" in Washington DC,
name = "K Street NW"
name_suffix = "included"
alt_name = "K Street Northwest" (would anyone really write this?)
FINAL WORDS)
Comments welcome. I would like to get a clear indication on where people
stand on my proposal, so please clearly indicate if you overall agree or
disagree with my proposal.
If most people agree with me, I would like to know the proper procedure for
making this into an official standard to follow (for at least the U.S.).
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